


One More Night

by TheSigyn



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4607922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto has to endure just one more night, and then the miracle can happen. Dr. Tanizaki would make Lisa whole again, and the nightmare would be over. He only has to get through one more night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Night

  
“I’ll see you tomorrow night, Dr. Tanizaki,” Ianto said with a respectful bow.   
  
“I am looking forward to it,” Dr. Tanizaki said, glancing back at the hotel clerk as she handed him his keycard.   
  
Ianto nodded and left the good doctor to his own devices, sliding back into the SUV and thence to the hub. He had a few more things to do before he could call it a night.   
  
He slid quietly through the semi-darkened hub, always keeping an eye open for Jack. The computers weren’t manned, but Jack could be anywhere. Jack never left the damned hub. It drove Ianto crazy.   
  
Fortunately, the team had a tendency to celebrate at the pub on Friday nights, usually for hours. That would give Ianto and Dr. Iyoshi time to assess and maybe work on helping Lisa tomorrow. And that was cutting it close. Ianto could tell by the slight flicker to the neon lights that Lisa was in pain. Again. She tended to drain power when she was in pain.  
  
He caught a glimpse of Jack’s blue shirt as he glanced up at the office. He was there, then. Good enough. So long as Ianto was quiet, hopefully Jack wouldn’t even know he had come back.   
  
The tunnels to the disused store room where he kept Lisa were dark and dank and dismal. He had chosen the most inhospitable place in the hub in the hopes that the others wouldn’t decide to casually wander in that direction. So far it had worked. Mostly. Jack was the only one who tended to wander the hallways at night, and Ianto had found... ways... to distract him. Very intense ways....  
  
He knocked the thought of it out of his head as he unlocked the heavy metal door to Lisa’s vault. Locked from the outside. He could never quite forget the times that Lisa’s pain had become too much for her and she’d lost all control, thrashing and screaming and breaking everything she could get her hands on. Until whatever strength the cyber-augmentations lent her failed and she fell, gasping, whimpering with pain, onto the floor. She wasn’t safe like that. She wasn’t a cyberman — Ianto knew what cybermen were like. All of his friends had been converted, and then they’d tried to kill him. Lisa wasn’t like that. But she didn’t always have... control....  
  
He knocked that thought out of his head as well before he opened the door. Lisa’s breathing was labored and rough, and he knew the medication had failed again. She was awake. He had come to hate it when she was awake. “Lisa!” His voice was whispery with concern and he came to her, tenderly touching her cold hand. “Are you feeling all right?”   
  
“Unh... no,” Lisa gasped. “My head is... burning... and my lungs....”   
  
“Try to rest,” he said, touching her brow — or what he could reach of it beneath the cyber-helm.   
  
“I — can’t....” Lisa grunted. “Can’t you... make it stop? Please... please, Ianto!”   
  
Ianto was torn. He didn’t want to up her medication, again. She was already past the point that should be lethal. “Lisa, there’s nothing I can do. The amount of morphine in your system—”   
  
“Ahugh!” Lisa groaned.   
  
The sound was like a lance. But worse, it echoed around the vault, and Jack was just upstairs. “Okay,” Ianto said, trying to hush her. “Okay. I’ll see... just give me a little time. I’ll see what I can do.”   
  
Two tears trickled down Lisa’s otherwise still face. The tension lines on her forehead were etched deep and filled with sweat. He calculated the safest mix of painkillers he could give her. It was still too much. But Lisa’s groans were coming faster and louder already, and each one sliced across his heart. He cringed as he added the mix to her IV, and then waited with apprehension to see whether he’d finally messed up and failed.   
  
After a while Lisa’s pain tense face softened. Ianto checked her vital signs. They were stable. He sagged with relief, heaving a sigh. Lisa’s voice was slightly less tense as she asked him, “Are you... okay?”   
  
Ianto instantly straightened up and turned to her, his face calm and reliable. “I’m doing just fine,” he told her. “Don’t you worry about me.” He kissed her gently on the lips — sour and tasting just slightly of silicon and ozone. “Dr. Tanizaki made it through from Japan,” he told her with a hopeful smile. “I think he can really help us.”   
  
“That would be nice.” Lisa’s voice trembled, trying not to hope too hard.   
  
“Tomorrow,” he said. “He’ll be here tomorrow evening. The others will be out of the hub, and you and I... we’ll be together again. Soon. I swear to you. Just one more night.”  
  
“I love you, Ianto,” Lisa whispered.   
  
“I love you,” Ianto whispered back, and kissed her cheek gently, again and again. “Always I’ll love you.”   
  
Lisa didn’t respond, and Ianto pulled away slightly. She’d gone back into whatever trance state the cyber-augmentation forced on her. It had been happening more and more often. Maybe it was a bad sign, but Ianto couldn’t help but be glad of it. Maybe it meant she spent less time thinking and acting human, but at least she spent less time in pain and horror.  
  
He went to the leaking tap on the wall — the other reason he had chosen this vault above all the other rooms in the hub — and filled the coffee pot he had set up to heat water. When the water was warm enough he dampened a wash cloth and wiped the sweat and dust from Lisa’s perfectly still face. He bathed her gently all over, preparing her for Dr. Iyoshi tomorrow. Then he pulled out her make-up kit. Lisa had always been an artful master at her make-up. She’d no more be seen in public without it than she’d be seen without a shirt. He hoped he’d have a chance to see her tomorrow before Dr. Iyoshi showed up, but he couldn’t be sure of that, so he would make her up now. Usually she spent over eighteen hours in these restful trance states, so it hardly made a difference if he did it now or later.   
  
When he was finished she looked slightly more like the Lisa he had known. She had been so beautiful. When he’d brought her home to meet his parents, they’d been shocked. “I never thought you’d land such a pretty little thing,” his dad had said brusquely.   
  
“She’s not a little thing,” Ianto said. “She’s got a prestigious career, and she’s an incredible shot. You should see her with a .38.”   
  
“What kind of a job is she doing that she needs a .38?” his dad asked.   
  
“Did I say she used it for work?” Ianto back tracked.   
  
His dad had looked at him suspiciously. “And you say you work together?”   
  
“I work in the office,” Ianto said. “She’s a top agent.”   
  
“Agent for what?”   
  
“Law, mostly,” Ianto said. “International law.”  
  
“Sounds namby-pamby to me,” said his dad. “If you’d come to work with me in the shop—”  
  
“I never wanted to be a tailor, Dad!”   
  
“No, you never wanted to be anything, did you, boy? And now what have you made of yourself? You come here with this swanky black Londoner, and—”  
  
“You’re on at me because she’s black?”  
  
“I’m trying to figure out why you brought her here, since you’re so ashamed of us.”   
  
Ianto looked down, turning his gaze from his father’s bitter, alcohol saturated, nicotine stained mouth. “I’m not ashamed of you, Dad.” His father had only grunted, and Ianto took Lisa and left as soon as he could. Granted, Ianto’s sister had seemed to like Lisa, but it wasn’t worth it. He hadn’t been home since. He hadn’t even told them he was living in Cardiff again.   
  
He would have had to explain Lisa.  
  
How could he ever explain Lisa? Even if she could be helped, even if Dr. Tanizaki could perform a miracle and the pain would cease and she could detach herself from the machines, Ianto knew it would never be the same. Her uterus and her lungs and her aural center had all been removed, replaced with cyber-tech. Her intestines had atrophied — she could probably never eat food again. Her core temperature was now five degrees below human. One of her eyes, he knew, was crawling with wires. When he shone a light into it, it glinted back metal. No matter if she was saved, she’d never be — normal — again. They could never go on vacation, marry, have children....   
  
It didn’t matter. She was Lisa. She was the only person he had ever loved in his life, and he was not — was NOT — going to let that go. He wasn’t sure he could go on if she died. Without Lisa, he had no sense of self. His family certainly hadn’t provided him with one. He could not abandon love. Not so simply.   
  
“Lisa?” he whispered to her. “I miss you.”   
  
She did not make any indication that she had heard him.   
  
“I wish I could take you out of here. Walk you down to the docks, look out at the seagulls. I wish I could take you out for pizza, and run my fingers down the back of your trousers until you squealed that I was tickling you. Then we’d go back to the flat and drink a bottle of wine and make love by the light of the telly. You’d taste of tomato sauce and burgundy and your skin would feel so hot against me.”   
  
She was still as a corpse, and almost as cold. It was only the steady hiss and beep of the machinery that told him she was not already dead.   
  
He thought, not for the first time, about simply unplugging everything. Letting all that pain and horror fade away forever. But he couldn’t give up now. Not with Dr. Tanizaki less than a day away. “Just one more night,” he whispered. He kissed her one last time and slid out the door, bolting it firmly behind him.   
  
  
***  
  
  
Ianto was tired. Between his legitimate work at the hub and the time he spent with Lisa and the time he spent researching doctors and medicine for Lisa, and the time he spent hiding her existence from the rest of Torchwood, Ianto had been working on four hours of sleep a night, if not less. Every once in a while, it caught up to him.   
  
He stopped at the edge of the center room. Jack and the others had made a mess again... Ianto would have to clean it.... He’d just cleaned this place this afternoon! He rested his head wearily against the wall, just for a moment... for a moment....   
  
“You look tired.”   
  
Ianto shouted and whirled, cringing into a defensive crouch the moment he heard the voice. He knew even as he reacted that it was only Jack, but he’d been hyper-alert and jumpy ever since Canary Wharf. He supposed that was to be expected. The horror of the attack. The stress of keeping Lisa alive. The constant terror that he’d be discovered.... The blood raced in his veins, but he covered up his start with a smile that — he hoped — wasn’t too nervous. “Hey. What are you doing here?”   
  
Jack raised an eyebrow. “I’m always here.”  
  
“Right,” Ianto said, trying desperately not to sound too shaky. “I knew that.”   
  
“I think the question is what you’re doing here,” Jack said with his bright toothed grin. He took a step forward and put his hand on Ianto’s forearm.   
  
“Ah — inventory,” Ianto said. It was a catch-all, universal excuse that he’d found could work wonders. The lower levels were filled with store rooms and vaults and crypts and who-knew-what-all, and no one seemed to know or care what all was down there. Ianto had actually found an inventory list from about twenty years before, and would add pages from it to the computer list whenever anyone got suspicious that his “inventory” work seemed to be taking a very long time.   
  
Of course, Jack had never believed that Ianto was really all that interested in inventory. Ianto had had to come up with another excuse for him. “Right,” Jack said with a smirk. “Inventory is why you came back to the hub at one in the morning.”   
  
Ianto was too tired to fight it tonight. One part of him said, Just get it over with quickly. He sighed softly, letting his eyes close. “You know why I’m here,” he whispered. He let his head tilt up and his lips part slightly.   
  
Ianto had noticed that gesture had always worked on him when women did it, whether he really liked them or not. He had been relieved to discover that it worked brilliantly on Jack, as well.  
  
Jack’s mouth seized his violently, his hands cupping the back of Ianto’s head, forcing him still. Ianto tensed, as he always did. Then, as Jack’s skilled kisses worked their way over and inside him, he found himself relaxing, letting his exhaustion leave him limp in Jack’s arms.   
  
_Lisa_. Ianto made himself think the name. From the beginning he knew why he was doing this. He was whoreing himself to an immortal, inhuman murderer, but he was doing it for Lisa. Lisa whom he loved. This was a desperate, intense act of love. That was the only reason why it ever felt like anything but rape. Sometimes it was horrible, but sometimes... more often that Ianto would ever admit... it wasn’t. And that was because of Lisa. That had to be the reason. “Jack,” he whispered as Jack ended the kiss.  
  
Jack kissed him again, softly, tenderly, his lips traveling gently over Ianto’s face, over and over, so soft, so warm. Ianto opened his mouth again and caught Jack gingerly with his teeth, pulling his mouth back to his until they were both breathless. Ianto was against the wall, and was glad of it. He was so tired, he wasn’t sure he could stand. Exhaustion. That was it. It didn’t have anything to do with the way Jack’s scent was so fucking intoxicating, or how hot and beautifully hungry his kisses were.  
  
Fortunately, Ianto never had to decide how far he was willing for things to go. So far Jack had been a dominant lover, and hadn’t asked. He’d simply taken, and Ianto hadn’t said no. There was one time, (probably the first time, but Ianto couldn’t distinctly remember,) when Jack had asked him, “Is this all right?” Since he had already been stripped half naked by that time, Ianto had been pretty sure that saying no would have caused a problem. Besides. By then he’d needed some excuse for lurking around the hub at odd hours that was more convincing than “inventory.” Jack was arrogant enough to assume that it had to be for him.   
  
Which meant that, as far as Jack was concerned, when Ianto was there, he was always there for him.   
  
Jack loosened Ianto’s tie and let his fingers travel sensuously down his throat. Ianto trembled at the heat of his fingers. Jack smiled at him. “Come on.” He tugged gently at the tie.   
  
Ianto hesitated for only a moment. “One more night,” he said in agreement, and let himself be pulled.   
  
  
***  
  
  
Jack’s bed down the fireman’s hole in his office was a place that Ianto had become very familiar with. As well as the myriad times Jack had dragged him down here and came at him hot and heavy from behind, Ianto also washed the sheets and changed the light bulbs and swept the floor. He had become the maid-of-all-work at the hub, and he couldn’t complain, because he would have done anything for access to Torchwood’s technology. For Lisa. Everything was for Lisa.   
  
Particularly this. Jack had stripped off Ianto’s suit coat and pulled off his tie and was sensuously opening his shirt, with his hot bare hands stroking Ianto’s flesh. His fingers passed lightly over his nipples, making him gasp with the sensation. He was hard as a rock. “Did you like that?” Jack asked.   
  
“Yes, sir,” Ianto whispered.   
  
Jack chuckled and bit his neck, the slight pain and heat of his breath making Ianto breathe hard. His arms went around Jack, his hands gripping tight to the hard flesh beneath his blue shirt. Jack slid out of his braces and unbuttoned the top buttons. He took Ianto’s hands and encouraged him to pull the shirt over his head. It quickly joined Ianto’s on the floor.  
  
Jack seized Ianto’s belt and his pants quickly fell to the floor. He pushed him down on the bed and pulled them off his feet along with his shoes, leaving Ianto sprawled naked on the bed. Jack pulled him upright and kissed him, then stood, leaving Ianto staring at the front of his trousers.   
  
He knew what he was supposed to do, but he couldn’t feel up to it tonight. Lisa, he told himself. He unbuttoned Jack’s trousers, fighting the urge to gag, his own cock slowly softening as disgust trickled through him. He’d done it before. It didn’t always bother him too much. It was just... tonight... he was so tired....   
  
He realized his shoulders had shaken in revulsion only after Jack had sunk to the floor, taking his cock away from Ianto’s face. He stared at him, his blue eyes so annoyingly, terrifyingly deep. Then he kissed him, just at the corner of his mouth, so tenderly that Ianto closed his eyes. He could almost have believed that one. Jack’s nose traced hot breath down Ianto’s cheek, then his lips and teeth slowly closed on his earlobe, sending trickles of sensation down his torso.  
  
Jack leaned away and finished taking off his clothes, leaving both of them stark naked. Ianto’s body felt disconnected, though he knew that when Jack grabbed his cock and yanked the way he would that he’d react again. At least enough for Jack. Ianto rolled over, leaving his arse exposed, expecting what usually happened. Jack’s fingers, slowly spreading him open. The lubricant, which did help, and which Jack always seemed to be in possession of. Then the rough attack inside, which Ianto hated. He kept telling himself how much he hated it, as Jack pushed him against the bed, twisting at his cock, forcing him through heated bursts of wretchedness and forced pleasure until he felt his body was at war, until he was at war with himself.  
  
Sometimes he hated Jack.  
  
Sometimes he really needed....  
  
Jack’s hands did touch him, sliding down his back, pausing and worrying at knots of tension he kept encountering. Ianto could feel Jack’s thighs as he straddled his legs. He shuddered under him, waiting for the assault that he could not begin to protest, even in his expression. He had to keep his expression neutral, if not pleased. It made his face ache. So often with Jack he felt like sobbing, or screaming, the feel of him releasing so much that was inside him and couldn’t ever let loose. Of course, he felt like that all the time, anyway.   
  
There it was. Jack’s fingers, slowly tracing his anus, sliding inside him, massaging him from the inside. He felt himself opening, felt his cock, starting to harden. He waited for the penetration.  
  
Jack paused, pulling out a condom. That was the only stipulation Ianto had ever made, after the second time and Jack had suggested trying without. His argument was that the hub’s health monitor could identify any diseases, so it would be safe. “No,” was all Ianto had said, and Jack hadn’t brought it up again. Ianto had never been so grateful for the safe-sex climate in the gay community. He would let himself be invaded by Jack, let himself fawn over him, act out the role, but he would not be without that single barrier.   
  
It wasn’t much of one.   
  
He expected the penetration, and was surprised when it didn’t come. Instead there was a pause, and Jack waited... and waited. Ianto was tingling all over, waiting for the inevitable. What was he waiting for? Couldn’t he get it over with? Damn it, Ianto thought, he needed....  
  
He wanted.   
  
Angry at his own internal betrayal he turned slightly to glance up at Jack. Jack was regarding him, his head tilted slightly. “You okay?” he asked quietly.   
  
Ianto felt himself sag. The concern in Jack’s face was disconcerting. “Don’t try to be nice to me,” he said dully. “I don’t even want that.”   
  
Jack leaned forward and bent Ianto’s leg, his fingers tracing back up to the rough and ready hole he’d already softened. “I don’t have to try to be nice.” His voice was so gentle and seductive that Ianto found himself opening quickly. Jack was quick to take advantage and worked himself inside, sliding in beside Ianto and taking him up in his arms.   
  
He’d never done it like this before. Slowly, deliberately, both of them lying down on their side. Facing each other. Ianto had one leg lifted over Jack’s thigh, but otherwise it was very restful. But worse, it was intimate. Ianto couldn’t turn his face away and ignore it. He couldn’t distance himself and pretend it was all purely mechanical. He couldn’t tell himself that it wasn’t real. Jack was there, warm and inside him and against him and all around him. His hard stomach rubbed relentlessly against Ianto’s cock, and his hair tickled his balls, and he filled him and thrusted inside him rhythmically, and firmly, but so, so slowly. The heat of his arms seemed to penetrate as deeply as his cock did, and the scent... the heady, powerful, intoxicating scent of him was like a drug. Ianto shuddered, gasping, half a sob, and Jack kissed him deeply. He released his mouth quickly so that Ianto could breathe, something he was finding it increasingly hard to do, with the feel of Jack’s hard abdomen rubbing over his cock.   
  
Jack’s eyes were deep as the night sky as he stared into Ianto’s. Penetrating him there, too. Ianto sighed, took another breath, sighed again. He pulled Jack close, relishing in the feel of his skin, the human flesh which was so hot and so alive and smelled so damned good that Ianto sometimes found himself burying his head in Jack’s clothes before he took them to be washed. He buried his face in Jack’s neck, and Jack’s hands stroked his hair.   
  
“Mm, Ianto,” Jack whispered.   
  
The sound of his name made a thrill pass through him. Jack had never done that before, either. Ianto used to think that he didn’t care — that he could be anyone, and Jack barely bothered remembering who he was fucking, let alone their name. But he did know it, and was whispering it as if it was a gift even to say.  
  
Ianto pulled his head back and stared at him. Their eyes locked. The repetitive movement as Jack pushed inside him was pure sex, and Ianto felt himself feeling more even watching it. It felt damned good, too. “Oh, God,” he whispered. There it was again, that fucking desire, that god damned uncontrollable need, that want, that break in the loneliness as Jack wrapped himself around Ianto and protected him from his own hell. He hated it when Jack was callus and brutal and Ianto found himself disgusted. He hated it even worse when Jack made him want him, when every moment was a release from the constant pain and worry Ianto had been suffering since Canary Wharf. Ianto wanted Jack too much. That was when Ianto really hated him. “Fuck you,” Ianto whispered. “Fuck you, Jack.”   
  
It was the right thing to say. Jack’s eyes smoldered and his movement against him intensified. But it wasn’t enough. The angle was wrong — too gentle. He shifted, pushing Ianto on his back, almost folded in half as Jack pushed himself deep, deep inside, thrusting with unreserved hunger.   
  
The speed and intensity as Jack pushed up inside him, as he slapped his body down on Ianto’s cock was almost too much to bear, but not quite enough to push him over. “Come on, Ianto,” Jack whispered, demanding, pushing against him. “Come for me. Come for me, Ianto.”   
  
“Shut up,” Ianto groaned.   
  
“Do it. Do it, Ianto, feel me. Just feel it, feel it.” He pushed even harder. “Feel me, Ianto.” He kissed him briefly and jerked against him. “Come for me!”   
  
“Shut...” Ianto trailed off as the answer entered his head, and almost pushed him over. He bit it back, but he couldn’t hold it for long. “Yes, sir,” he breathed.   
  
The words of submission broke him, and in a brilliant flash he let go. Ianto groaned in surrender to the moment. One glorious moment of release — of pain, of denied pleasure, of loss, of loneliness, all of them pouring against Jack as he filled him, and his eyes pierced him more deeply than his cock ever had.  
  
Jack smiled as Ianto came and jerked against him, letting himself come, too. Clearly he’d been holding back for a while. “Nngh!”   
  
Jack was never much of a screamer, Ianto had noticed. He seemed to think his pleasure was no one’s business but his own, so he held it inside. Jack thrust two or three more times before withdrawing, and Ianto expected him to pull away.   
  
He didn’t. He lay over Ianto, staring down at him, his eyes their own fucking universe, gazing at him with such wonder and pleasure. Jack’s fingers traced over the planes of Ianto’s face, his thumb caressing his lips, his fingertips passing over his brow. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispered.   
  
Ianto’s eyes closed, and he let his head sink to the side. Jack slid off him and pulled him close, until they were almost in the same position they had been fucking in, but Ianto’s head was tucked against Jack’s chest, and his arms were like shields.   
  
Ianto really wanted to hate him in that moment, but he couldn’t. He was too tired to hate. Tired and scared and....   
  
Maybe Jack really did care? While he was only performing the brusque, often painful, always seemingly meaningless fucking they’d done in the past, Ianto would never have even considered it. But tonight.... He’d been so gentle tonight. If Ianto hadn’t known better, he would have called this making love.   
  
He didn’t make the decision. The desire to confess had been burning in him since his first week with Jack, as soon as the lies had started and the fear had begun to grow. As the casual flirtation had turned to heavy glances and then to accidental touches and then to not so accidental ones and then....  
  
Ianto had never wanted to lie.   
  
“Jack?” he murmured against the sweat-damp skin. “There’s something I need to tell you.”   
  
Jack slightly tensed in Ianto’s arms, but his fingers caressed his hair. “What?”  
  
“Torchwood one,” Ianto began. “You know what happened there. So many died....”   
  
“Yes,” Jack said quietly, and Ianto had a feeling that Jack might have lost someone there, too.  
  
“Those Dalek things killed everything in their path, but... the Cybermen.... The Cybermen were worse. Because they didn’t want to kill us. I was in archives. Lisa was a field agent, and when she found out what was going on... she came to find me.”  
  
“This is Lisa Hallet, that girlfriend of yours.”  
  
“Yes,” Ianto said. He couldn’t look at Jack. “If she’d just run when she learned what was happening, she would have been okay. She’d have gotten out before they caught her. But she came to save me... and as we were running together they caught us....” He was trembling, now. He couldn’t help it. He’d never told this to anyone, not ever. He’d had no one to tell. “They took us to one of their... processing units. I told them to take me first, but they weren’t listening. They took Lisa and strapped her in, and I heard her screaming... screaming....”  
  
“Stop,” Jack said.   
  
Ianto opened his eyes and looked up. “What?”   
  
“Just stop,” Jack said dully. “I can tell by your voice you don’t really want to tell this story, and frankly, I really don’t want to hear it.”   
  
Ianto froze, unable to find anything to say, or even anything to think. Jack looked down at him, all warmth and depth gone from his eyes. “We’ve all got our terrible stories,” he said. “They don’t go away by sharing them. All we’ve done is add our burdens to someone else. Believe me.” He looked back up at the ceiling. “You’re better off handling it yourself.”   
  
“Is that what you think?”  
  
“That’s what I know. Through years of experience. Don’t share the pain. It just makes it worse. I’m not going to be stupid enough to tell you any of my terrible stories, and you really don’t need to tell me yours.”  
  
Ianto lay, curled up against Jack, warm and secure and cared for, and he felt cold. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t really want to tell you.”  
  
Ianto was feeling ill again. Ten minutes ago he’d been half in love with this man, and suddenly he hated him so violently he wanted to punch him in the eye and call him every evil name in the book. Cold, callus, heartless, inhuman....  
  
It didn’t matter. Lisa wasn’t like that. And it wasn’t as if Ianto could ever really love Jack. Good thing. Since apparently, Jack had never loved anyone.  
  
Tired as he was, Ianto couldn’t lie beside him anymore. He sat up and started pulling on his clothes.   
  
“You don’t have to go.”   
  
“No, I really do,” Ianto said.  
  
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Jack said quietly. Ianto glanced at him, wondering if this was Jack’s version of an apology.   
  
“Hardly matters, sir,” Ianto said. “It’s not as if this means anything. It’s just one more night. Right?”   
  
Jack regarded him for a long moment, his eyes cold. For one brief second, Ianto thought he caught a glimpse of those depths he’d been imagining earlier, but no. They were gone. There was nothing but ice. “It is what it is,” Jack said evenly. “Good night, Ianto. I’m glad you came tonight.” He said it with a smirk at his double-entendre.  
  
“Good night, sir,” Ianto said brusquely. I fucking hate you, he didn’t say.   
  
Ianto knew he should go home and try to get some sleep, but he couldn’t. He needed to see Lisa. Experience had taught him that, emergencies aside, Jack wouldn’t be doing much for the next hour. He slid down the stairs and along the corridors, back to Lisa’s vault.   
  
It was a pointless gesture. Lisa was still ‘resting’, and he wasn’t going to be able to get a word out of her, let alone a comforting hug, or a sympathetic ear. For a long moment he simply stared at her as she stared back, her eyes blank and empty and unseeing.   
  
Ianto broke — not for the first time — and sank his head against her, the tears threatening to choke him. God damn Jack! Couldn’t he make up his mind to be callus and brutal? Why’d he have to be tender and gentle and such a fucking liar? Ianto had never hated anyone so much. But as he leaned against the silicon and ozone scent of his erstwhile beloved, a gentle but intoxicating scent permeated his awareness. Jack’s scent was still embedded in Ianto’s sleeve. Without thinking about it, Ianto shifted his head to breathe it in, sucking deeply at the comforting, seductive scent.  
  
Ianto realized what he was doing and stood up and away from Lisa. “Just one more night,” he said, his voice cracking. “Lisa....”   
  
It was no good. She was beyond him.   
  
He staggered back up to the central room, and nearly stumbled over the coffee table. Jack had turned the lights off. Of course he had. He probably assumed Ianto had already gone home.   
  
Ianto turned the other direction the kicked what must have been a coffee cup. It clattered away across the floor and landed with liquid plonk in the water. Ianto sank down onto the leather couch and abandoned the search for the door. He was too tired.... Besides. He should get a start early... he had to clean the common room....  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
Twenty minutes later Jack came out of his office, dressed to go out. His evening with Ianto had upset him. He’d wanted to keep it casual with the boy, but... he was so beautiful. And every once in a while that pain crossed over his face, making Jack’s heart clench and his loins spasm. He wanted to protect him. He didn’t want to love him, but if things kept on as they were....  
  
In the dim light he spied Ianto on the couch, still half sitting, his eyes closed in exhaustion. Jack couldn’t keep himself from smiling at the peaceful expression on his face. “I said you looked tired,” he said to himself. He lifted Ianto’s feet and set him lying on the couch. Then he took off his coat and spread it over him, tucking him up securely. “What am I going to do with you?” He kissed Ianto tenderly on the forehead and went back to the office. He didn’t need to go out. Everything he wanted was already right here....  
  
  
***  
  
  
More than three quarters asleep, Ianto felt a heavy, comforting weight pass over him, and he snuggled into it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be comforted... but it smelled so wonderful. He needed it, he knew. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could handle the stress.... But after all... it was only one more night.   
  



End file.
